[guywithahat]

Well it's a retort on the 2022 IRA bill, which increased the IRS budget by 80 billion over 10 years, and paved the way to hire 87,000 people. There has been a lot of hiring recently so it's hard to tell one thing from another but this isn't so much of mass layoff as an attempt at returning to normal.

[toomuchtodo]

Please provide evidence for what you considered to be normal to be an effective workforce for the ongoing task at hand (nation state tax collection).

[guywithahat]

We had an exceptional increase in funding, followed by an attempt to curb that increase in funding. The size of the IRS is not just a financial exercise but a moral one, and I believe the prior budget increases as part of the 2022 IRA provides important context to staffing in the IRS.

[nobodyandproud]

I think we should first agree on what “normal” means.

I personally view our IRS head count as being at historical lows by raw headcount; and even lower by population size if we look at the last 40 years (would love data that goes back further).

[groundzeros2015]

The evidence was the baseline before the increase

[nobodyandproud]

Normal?

The 100k headcount and bill doesn’t cover what we in the US used to enjoy, with a smaller population: - https://taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/IRS%...

- https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/5856e771-dd09-4517-...